yellow sweater woman calls this guy a liberal while outlining she believes political movements start with a secluded bunch of great man nerds who generate big important ideas from thin air
Well the writer is a turbo lib so idk what people expect from him
He’s one of the slightly more tolerable versions of libertarian. He did write long things on how the current American healthcare system sucks for non-rich people, and how national borders should be entirely removed because freedom of movement benefits everybody and increases equality.
Clearly naive like all libertarians (ie thinking a bourgeois “first-world” nation would ever implement open borders), but seems to at least have some care for your average human.
Those types seem to become communist when they read theory. The misanthropes become fascist.
Those types seem to become communist when they read theory.
Precisely why I emailed him the thread. In the hope he lurks around a bit.
Yeah, saying that about Marxist-Leninism in particular is pretty wild, given that the amount of deviations that are possible within ML thought because of it’s fairly organic nature. Not that tax bracket stuff is not a severe deviation from theory.
DEVIATION??
“people are less likely to read the original stuff, and it becomes clear that part of the original work is simply wrong”
(a) hexbear is running a Capital book club at this very moment (b) Marx was right.
Mighty Weinersmith, from a liberal perspective, deals a killing stroke to DSA’s North Star caucus and possibly Pete Buttigieg types. I’m quaking in my boots
Marx was wrong about plenty of stuff. Socialism has largely developed in individual pre-industrial nations.
Socialism has largely stalled at social democracy in individual pre-industrial countries, unless they have then proceeded to rapidly industrialize. The only place where it is making significant material progress is that which has largely turned the power of the state towards the facilitation of the global market and stayed out of global affairs (I.e. China, Vietnam). While it certainly is AES, it is in fact following a more strictly economical orthodox historical Marxist path than previous iterations of ML or MLM thought.
Essentially, Marx is and was right, the problem is how can we get the places where the radicalized populations are also the industrial proletariat, essentially how do we solve Lenin’s problem of the core and periphery. And in that column, since the collapse of the USSR, we have yet to actually see the real success of socialism and communism, a world not dominated by capitalist markets, and for that to truly happen, the global industrial proletariat has to become organized. Unfortunately, Trotsky was right (even if his other ideas, if implemented would have been suicidal for the USSR at the time).
Socialists have won great victories, the fact that 40 hour work week is even pretended to be standardized is a great victory for socialists, but the spoils continue to go towards the liberals, because progress is not going to be a straight line, but a constant struggle. What we do, for sure, know is that despite liberal pleading, this is not the best possible world, better and more humane outcomes and ways of organizing capital and labour are absolutely possible.
Socialism has largely stalled at social democracy in individual pre-industrial countries, unless they have then proceeded to rapidly industrialize
My point is that, in China for example, it was a peasant revolution in a (mostly) pre-industrial society rather than a proletarian revolution in an industrialized society. From what I’ve seen, Marx didn’t consider peasants to have much revolutionary potential.
Correct, and it is because of that revolution that they entered the industrial age in control of their means of production and are now at the forefront of industry. Much like many largely nationalist revolutions before and after it, only this one occured under the banner of a Marxist party, rather than strictly national bourgeoisie. Similar revolutions occured across Asia, South America, and the Middle East, but in none were the contradictions quite as sharp as Vietnam, China, and Korea, which is where the nationalist militias of peasants were at the forefront of armed struggle and a Communist party came into state power.
Marx didn’t consider European peasants to have revolutionary potential based on their reaction to the French Revolution. He largely did not deal with the class characteristics of Asia, which was much to his detriment, but he also didn’t have a lot to go off of for them historically. It’s not that Marx was wrong about them, Marx simply didn’t address them. Near the end of his life, he certainly considered most nationalistic struggles against empire to be revolutionary regardless of class characteristic, a trait that would be carried over into Marxist-Leninism.
tax the rich is a dog whistle 😗 I dont care about taxes
I’ve been dragged on twitter for this take lol
Something’s got to give with this level of wealth concentration and at this point “taxed” is entirely too nice of a verb for
have to be wordier and more subtle
Jeff Bezos? no i subscribe to the Bard the Bowman school of thought when it comes to wealth-hoarding monsters.
I am a proud Bardist-Leninist.
Yea feel like it’s largely just because if people said what we should actually do to the rich they’d be banned anywhere that had a policy of non violence.
Remove the t and I’m way more down
Middle English: ‘estimate or determine the amount of a penalty or damages’
Yeah we should tax the rich
Guy called us “liberals” without even needing to say the word. A master of his craft.
Vague ideas how much it costs to make a linen coat
People organizing for marginal gains in Minimum wage be like…
What
I literally never met someone who called themselves an ML who didn’t advocate for an actual revolution of some kind. ML organization also doesn’t allow this to happen, since you have to subscribe to the party line and actually take courses on Marxism. This comic makes no sense, it’s describing a different kind of person who wouldn’t want to call themselves a ‘Marxist-Leninist’ anyway.
I’ve met people who call themselves socialists who are just socdems or even liberals, but I’ve never met someone in the USA who proclaims to be an ML who isn’t actually one. Most people in the USA don’t even know what capitalism is, they certainly couldn’t define ML if they hadn’t studied it.
I’ve only met one person who’s called themselves a communist who didn’t quite know what it meant. The way they’d phrase it was “I’m the most liberal person I know. I’m more liberal than communists.” But when he’d talk about policies he wanted they were very standard libertarian things, actually.
There are also Caleb Maupin and that Haz guy. Both claim to be Marxist-Leninist and both are more like weird American chauvinists. Ask them to describe what capitalism is and they’ll give you an antisemitic conspiracy theory
Maupin and Haz are just fringe weirdos who were able to amplify themselves via the Internet and honestly probably some help from the feds. They are basically the same LaRouche in my book. They would be forced out any legitimate ML circle very quickly.
Marxism Leninism is basically the single organizational form resistant to this process
I really don’t get the joke. I’m not sore or anything there’s plenty to poke fun at about us, but what exactly is the premise of this joke?
M-Ls don’t read theory? Is there a branch of economic thought that reads theory more?
Is it important whether part of the originating theory is “simply wrong”? Marxism isn’t the exegesis of religious texts, it’s a dynamic practice, a lens that is constantly updated with new additions and vigorous debate.
Are people who claim to be Marxist-Leninists not actually Marxist-Leninists?
IDK honestly this just reads more like what a lib assumes MLs must be like, because they can’t fathom people might actually genuinely believe we need to liquidate the ownership class so we must all be posturing.
I’m assuming that this is poking fun at radlibs cosplaying as marxists while only advocating mild reforms in actuality (Jacobin etc.) I doubt Weinersmith knows any actual ML’s.
The fact people here are acting like this is an attack on actual MLs and not recognizing it as shitting on radlibs who call themselves communist is weird, it seems pretty clear cut.
Copy + Replace “ML” with “Internet Anarchist”.
The other day I saw an “anti-authoritarian” internet anarchist shitting on trade unions in response to a recent wage increase for Ben and Jerry’s workers. It’s like these folks got an addiction to being useful idiots.
All political orientations are outread by Chuds.
Is this a joke?
I hope so.
This is what happens to movements that are all theory but no practice. Practices forces you to iron out the specifics and to focus on the goal. If you’re just left to academic pondering, then things become more abstract the longer you go without having to actually make it work.
Im in this comic and I dont like it
